The Forever Marriage (22 page)

Once she did, the voice on the other end of the phone was monotone, checking off details the way a weary carnival ride operator might announce,
Keep your hands inside the car at all times
. “We’ve got two slots for our three-hour people: seven to ten or one to four. Which one do you want?”

Carmen stopped to consider. Did she want to get up before dawn and have her body poisoned before lunch so she could spend the rest of the day swimming in chemical muck? Or would she prefer that flat,
hottest part of afternoon—three hours of sitting idle in the middle of the day—then stepping out into rush hour with her organs freshly scalded and trying to fight her way home?

“Seven to ten,” she said.

“Alright. We’re going to need you here about thirty minutes early the first time, no less, so we can do a baseline blood draw,” the voice droned on. “You probably don’t want to eat breakfast that morning, but it’s up to you. You’ll get antinausea drugs in the cocktail, along with whatever your doctor ordered. Wear comfortable clothes and something to read or work on: knitting, crossword. No small children or pets.”

Pets?
Carmen imagined a clinic full of exotic animals, iguanas on leashes and brightly colored birds swooping through the room.

“Any questions?”

“My hair. When will I lose it?”

“Second treatment. Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-four to forty-eight hours after.”

Carmen caught her breath. There’d been no wavering, no slim chance held out that she might respond differently than other women. “You’re that certain?” she asked.

“It could take up to three days for everything to fall out,” the voice revised. “But that’s pretty much the limit. Most women shave it off before, to keep the drain at home from clogging up.”

Carmen’s third call was to a shop that had come highly recommended by the Breast Recovery Foundation for natural-looking human hair wigs. If she got in tomorrow to be photographed and measured, the woman on the phone told her, they might possibly be able to turn something around for her in four months. Six at the outside.

“But I’m going in for chemo next week,” Carmen said.

“I sympathize,” said the wigmaker automatically. “But we’re very proud of our products and I assure you, they’re worth the wait.”

There was no trying to parse this logic. Carmen had more important things on her mind: She had to decide when and how to tell her children what was happening, and what to do about work.

She didn’t need the money. Her paycheck was laughable compared to the money that came from other sources: Jobe’s insurance, and the trusts that George and Olive had set up for the kids. But she did need the insurance coverage; Jobe’s had lapsed the day he died and Carmen had gladly let it go. Luca was covered under a Maryland program for the disabled, but she and the other two children were on her policy from the agency. And now Carmen was worried about the myriad of other gruesome, unexpected illnesses that might come up. What was it that long-ago ob-gyn had called it when Luca was born?
A mistimed collision
. There seemed to be a lot of those going around.

Carmen called the HR director—who was also the agency’s controller; it was a small shop—to explain the situation. But when he answered, this man she knew mostly as the guy who manned the grill at their company picnics, she seized up. How did one go about telling a relative stranger that so many calamities had been visited upon her house? Surely he would judge her, understanding that she was guilty of something even if he didn’t know what.

“Do you have some time free tomorrow?” she asked casually. “I’ll be in around nine and could meet with you any time.”

But once she was seated in his office, around two o’clock the next afternoon, she realized she’d made yet another mistake. This would have been so much easier over the phone rather than wedged into his schedule, between the messy firing of a web site architect who was downloading porn on his computer—the rumors had been flying around all morning—and a meeting with the quarterly tax guy.

“You look wonderful, Carmen,” said the HR man, picking up his gold pen and holding it poised over a legal pad. The last time she’d spoken to him he’d sounded distrustful, but he was all warmth and Easter bunny goodness now. “Once again, my sincere condolences. So”—he coughed, a kind of segue—“what’s on your mind?”

“I have, um, cancer.” She winced. It was a disgusting word, all slippery and attractive on the surface, but rotted horror underneath. “I’m going to have to start chemotherapy soon and I’m worried about how this will affect my job performance. However …” The only way
to do this was to be honest; she’d come to this conclusion in the middle of the night. “I need to maintain my insurance, for obvious reasons. I let go of the university policy when my husband died and this …” She held out her hands. “Is all I have.”

“Oh, Carmen, I’m so sorry.” The man was rising from his chair and circling the desk, coming toward her with his hands outstretched to grasp hers. “I don’t know how you bear up under all this! Your poor husband and now
this
. You are a saint, I think. One of God’s chosen.”

“I thought those were the Jews,” Carmen said, tugging her hands away discreetly.

“What I meant was …” He’d let go of her left hand but continued to hold her right. “God knows who can handle tragedy and who can’t. He must feel that you’re very strong.”

Carmen blinked. It was as if she’d never met this man before! Rather than the cheerful, red-faced man who forked over a bratwurst from inside a cloud of charcoal smoke, he was a lunatic. Some sort of hit-and-run preacher. Fury rose in Carmen’s chest—feeding her cancer no doubt. Everything would be better if she could gore this guy with his pen.

Instead Carmen pretended to cough and yanked her hand away, supposedly to cover her mouth. “Thanks,” she said after she’d given a few convincing hacks. “But really, what I’m looking for is your professional advice. I wanted to come forward at the outset so this doesn’t catch anyone off guard. But I’m going to have to plan my work schedule around,” she plowed on as fast as she could, because it was the only way to say it, “chemotherapy. And I need to make sure that reducing my hours for a while won’t affect coverage for me and the, uh, kids.”

“Hmm. I need to …” The HR man perched on the edge of his desk. “I’m thinking, Carmen, that we should bring Fred in on this.”

He left her to track down the agency owner and she was glad. As boring as it was sitting in this office, staring out through the enviable windows at the building next door, it was better than having
to listen to him and confront someone else’s suspicions that God had had a hand in her cancer. She already had enough suspicions of her own along those lines.

Ten minutes later when Fred Lang came in and took her hand, she reflexively presented her cheek. The last time she’d seen Fred was after Jobe’s funeral when he had kissed her on his way out the door, his breath laced with garlic and hot mustard. Now he leaned down to press his cheek against hers—a more appropriate office greeting, Carmen understood—smelling of nothing but the faint midday sweat of someone who’d taken a walk at lunch.

“Carmen, I’m so, so sorry to hear this,” Fred said. And like the HR director before him, Fred stood leaning on the edge of the desk. But this felt entirely different. Fatherly, almost. Carmen wondered why she and Fred had never been closer. She wondered, too, if he knew that she’d slept with an account executive a few weeks after starting her job. “We are 100 percent behind you. Whatever you need, we’ll make it happen. All you need to worry about is getting well.”

“Meaning … ?” The question drifted in from far away; Carmen turned. She’d nearly forgotten about the preacher. But he was inserting himself back into this conversation, questioning—Carmen was sure—whether she merited such wholehearted support.

“Meaning.” Fred was smooth. Everyone knew this was why his firm succeeded in a field crowded with writers and designers who were no better than average (including, Carmen would have admitted ruefully, her). The owner alone was extraordinary: well dressed and charming. Also ruthless, though when he was negotiating, this trait never came out until the end. “If Carmen needs to work from home for a while, we’ll set her up with a networked computer from there. And if not, we can adjust her schedule. How does that sound?”

Fred turned back to her and she paused, wanting more than anything for the man to sit down so she could crawl up on his lap. It was confusing, this feeling. She didn’t know if she wanted him to continue being fatherly or rip off her clothes and take her on the desk. Whatever happened, she imagined that afterward they could plan in whispers
how to vanquish the zealot forever so their cozy familial relationship could remain intact.

“That’s very nice of you, Fred,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I don’t know yet what I’ll need. I have my first treatment next week so I’ll know more then about how it affects me.” She took a shaky breath, picturing herself as that stork-thin, white, bald woman with a kerchief, sitting in her cube at work. There was no way this man, or any other, would want her then. “Can we put off planning until I know?”

“Of course, of course.” Fred seemed lost in thought and entirely unhurried, which was part of his charm.

“There
is
another potential solution.” The HR man moved forward, breaking into the bubble Carmen and Fred had created. They both swiveled in his direction. “I’ve been thinking …. You told me, Carmen, that you were concerned mostly about your insurance, that you’d let your husband’s lapse. But according to federal law, you have ninety days to invoke COBRA after a spouse’s death, and if I’m counting correctly, you’re still within that window by a few days. If you’re
not
able to work and you’d
rather
just focus on your health right now, you probably could go back to Jobe’s department and fill out the paperwork. It’s just a thought.”

Carmen tensed and looked at the faces of both men. Had they talked about this, planned it as they walked through the halls to meet her? Fred appeared as surprised as she was, but he was a great actor. Everyone said that. It was another of the reasons for his success: He had the ability to appear riveted even by a client he loathed.

“Why … why would I do that?” she finally asked.

“Well.” The man slid back behind his desk and started tapping on his computer, suddenly businesslike. “We’re a small company, so we have certain limits on our policy. For instance, I believe there’s a, yes, here it is, a one-million-dollar lifetime limit for you. Cancer treatment can
easily
run into the many millions. Especially if it”—at least he had the decency to avert his eyes when he said this—“recurs. But the university has thousands of employees and their pool is large, so
they can afford a much larger cap. As I think you found out with Jobe.”

“But wouldn’t there be a deadline?” Poor choice of words. Carmen revised. “A time limit?”

The man nodded. “Eighteen months. Still, you might want to check into it. If the treatment is much better through their plan, it still might be worth it. Getting the very best medicine right up front is known to save lives in cases like this. And I’m not saying our insurer would scrimp. But there are certain economic realities. We’re a small operation and, unfortunately, we can’t afford to support a critically sick individual for very long.”

The three of them sat in silence for a few seconds and Carmen listened hard to determine if she could hear her cancer cells clustering, moving, raising rabble, and threatening to overtake.

“It sounds like you have a lot to think about,” Fred broke in. “No pressure from our side. You just let us know what your decision is. And you know, I hope, that we only want the best for you.”

I do not know that! Not at all
. Everything had changed, yet again. All images of her boss as father, lover, or protector had completely disappeared. Carmen rose. “Thank you,” she said, holding out her hand, which he shook formally this time.

“I’d be happy to go over the two insurance plans with you, Carmen.” The other man stood, too, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of another heartfelt moment.

“Great,” she said, gathering her purse. And without another word—about insurance or the two client projects she was late delivering—she turned and left.

Carmen was home by 4:15, which was just in time to call the benefits office at Hopkins. It turned out the preacher was right.

The man on the phone looked up Jobe’s employment history with a series of tapping keys that Carmen could hear and said, “Yup, died April seventeen. I show you’ve got eight more days. And the lifetime
benefit limit is five million. Should I send you the paperwork?”

“Sure,” Carmen said. It was already past pick-up time today so the form would go out in tomorrow’s mail. Then she’d have seven days. She could leave this dilemma up to the U.S. Postal Service. If the envelope reached her in time to complete the transaction, she would take the five million over eighteen months. If not, she’d stay on at work and keep her paltry million-dollar coverage for the duration. Heads or tails.

“That is so totally not like you,” said Jana when Carmen told her. “Come on, Car. You see what’s going on here, don’t you? I mean, you’re not stupid. You’ve been paying premiums for how many years, and now your company wants to drop you on the spot because you’ve got cancer? It’s not right.”

Carmen shrugged. They were sitting on the porch in the sun, drinking margaritas. If she was going to start chemo in a week, Carmen had decided she would eat and drink everything she wanted for the next seven days. Plump up and enjoy things while she could, before the metallic taste and ceaseless nausea set in.

“I don’t know.” Carmen, in a rocker, leaned back and closed her eyes. Why was it that dying sunlight felt better than any other kind? “Do you know why we took my insurance in the first place? Because Jobe was sick and we knew it. He’d gone into remission after the first bout and we thought it was a good idea to have double protection. So
we
were trying to game the system; and now the system is trying to game us … me … back.”